British Car Show

It's time for the annual Memorial Day weekend British Car Show. This event has been held every year for the past 8 years or so and is a welcome springtime event. It's a fun time for us because we have owned British cars and have fond memories of them (in spite of Lucas electrical systems, terrible heaters, and funny names for things - like bonnet, spanner, boot, nave plates and spanners). We still get excited about the great lines of cars like this Jaguar XK-120 or 140 (not sure which). It's a nice event for the community since it is very clean; the cars come, the event is held and the cars leave - no muss, no fuss, no debris. The people who attend the event - both car owners and spectators - are (dare I say it) a cut above the average Railroad Days attendee. They are conservative, well behaved, enthusiastic, nice people.

Blocking of Dunsmuir Avenue in front of our store for events has been a controversial subject in the town. Yours truly went on a rampage about three years ago when the Railroad Days event blocked the street from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. It murdered our business since our regular "bread and butter" customers couldn't get to our store to buy paint, nails, nuts and bolts and so on. My anger at that seems to have reached the organizers of the event because Railroad Days hasn't done it again and other events such as this one sort of tip-toe around the topic and are careful not to overdo it. The British Car Show closes the street for about three hours and that is great. It doesn't seem to disrupt our business a bit and the day has proven to be one of our busiest ones for the year.

Opening day of fishing season (April 29) has come and gone so our busy season has officially started. It will be an interesting summer since continually higher gas prices do seem to be having some effect. We're seeing noticably fewer out of town fishermen (and fisherwomen) and we've been told that there have been some cancellations for the British Car Show due to gas prices. It could cost $50.00 and up to bring a car from Sacramento for example. On the other hand - our business seems to be benefiting from a reluctance of customers to drive out of town to buy things that we sell. Our sales in lawn and garden items is noticably higher and the "bread and butter" nuts and bolts, plumbing and electrical and paint things are moving well.

We now have a website - www.dunsmuirhardware.com that links to this blog so more people should see it as the word gets out. It's a very simple site that is just our way of getting the old fashioned hardware store into the cyber age. It will be interesting to see what it does.

Thanks to Brad Sage for the Jaguar photo.